Moral Repair in El Salvador
El Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen
“The proactive role of a photographic archive is its contribution to a peaceful culture in a post-war society. The simple fact that the photographs return to the communities where the people waiting to see the exposition are the subjects of the very pictures has value in the range of moral repair to the victims of war.” View el Museo's expositions.
Georgina Rivas Hernández, Archivist, el Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen
Sample images from el Museo's collectionMoral Repair in El Salvador
El Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen has a collection of photographs that outline the civil war as it unfolded in El Salvador. El Museo has the most complete collection of Salvadoran history in the world and a staff that is committed to using it to promote peace in a post-war society.
Laurie McGinley is raising the money needed to conserve, digitize and publicize the photography collection housed in el Museo. Once the collection is prepared, el Museo staff and Laurie will bring traveling presentations in the form of photo-forums to the communities that were affected by the war. The simple fact that the photographs return to the communities where the people waiting to see the exposition are the subjects of the very pictures has value in the range of moral repair to the victims of war. The images will be shown on a community screen and el Museo staff will be there to field questions, record names of the people in the photographs and facilitate community participation in annotating the collection. In addition to the community presentations, the updated image database will allow el Museo to put more images on line to make them available to ex-patriots, researchers and academics.
On December 7th, 2005 Laurie was awarded the Documentary Photography Distribution Grant from the Open Society Institute (OSI) in New York. The grant is intended for photographers who will present documentary photography in innovative ways. OSI is a well-recognized organization and their contribution to the project validates the importance of this work.
OSI's generous contribution will cover 45% of the costs of the project. Laurie still needs to raise the remaining funds so moral repair can begin in El Salvador. She is looking for grants and donations from individuals, institutions or corporations. The Resource Center of the Americas the fiscal agent for this project. They will accept tax-deductible contributions and monitor Laurie’s expenditures throughout the project. Please consider the impact this project will have on the people of war-torn El Salvador. You may make checks payable to RCTA and write “el Museo” on the check. The Resource Center's address is:
Resource Center of the Americas
3019 Minnehaha Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55406
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